


Blue

by CrackingLamb



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: ...sorta, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Inner Dialogue, Is It a Fix-It?, Krieg typical violence, Post Borderlands 3, Psychosis, canon has no power here, so there's some spoilers...I guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:46:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24646645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrackingLamb/pseuds/CrackingLamb
Summary: She's gone and he's crazy.Right?
Relationships: Krieg/Maya (Borderlands)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Posting this as a happy birthday to me. It kinda goes all over the place, but hey, that's what we love about Krieg.
> 
> Let me know what you think, feedback is the lifeblood and I answer every comment.

It didn't really matter where he was anymore.

He thinks...maybe...he ate a meal not too long ago, but he couldn't tell anyone what it was, and not just because what came out of his mouth was usually nonsense. Lately, not even that came out of his mouth. He'd flipped.

 _RAAAAGGGEEEEE_!

“Heh,” he said behind the mask that filtered slag and air into him. “You sound like me.”

SHE WAS OURS OURS OURS OURS.

He looked out across the sky, wondered if maybe the stars held secrets. If she was out there, dust and particles and little blue tattooed bits.

BATHE IN THE MEAT CHUNKS. C'MON, _RAAAGGEEE_!

“No,” he said, so softly it didn't carry past his mask. There was no point. What would rage accomplish anyhow?

She was gone.

***

He held an Echolog in his hands, his big hands that always looked like they could crush her to pieces. She liked them, said that they made her feel dainty, whatever that meant.

Anyway, he held an Echolog in his hands.

He didn't need to play it anymore, but he did anyway.

“ _Hey, bad boy, I got stuff to do. Keep an eye on our place, I don't know how long I'll be gone. I miss you, baby. I already miss you_...”

“Miss you,” he murmured. There was a meteor shower tonight, but he wasn't watching it, not really. Every now and then he'd look up at the sky, his unmasked eye open and sightless to the falling stars. His other eye tracked them behind the mask, tactical and clinical and cold. That one had eridium in it. He should find where it landed. It was curious that eridium would fall back to Pandora from space when it came from the surface.

BLOOD! RAGE! FIND THEM _FIND_ _THEM_!

“Your point?” he asked with a sigh.

PAIN, ALL OF IT, ALL THE TIME!!!

“Buddy, we're already there.”

I TOLD YOU WHAT WOULD HAPPEN!

“You did,” he agreed with himself, very softly.

***

He heard, from Ellie of all people, that her murderers were already dealt with. Now he sat slumped against Roland's marker, his back cool on the stone. They'd put a smaller marker next to it.

Maya

Beloved Friend and Crimson Raider

Never to be Forgotten

There wasn't even a body. Tina had looked.

Tina.

NOT AGAIN. NOT. AGAIN.

“Can't make'em all happy.”

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE BLUE TATTOOS FOREVER. AND EVER!

“Buddy, you're shouting in my head.”

RAAAAAGGGGGEEEE!!!!!!

“I hear ya.” There was a despairing sound to his inner voice, once the calm one, the sane one. Broken, all broken. The inside matched the outside. Grief was funny that way.

He never thought he'd have to.

Never thought any of it would matter.

 _BLUUUUEEEEE_! The voice screamed, over and over, hopeless and raging and so sad he thought he might cry. He hadn't when he heard the news, but he might now. SALT THE WOUNDS!!

“Buddy, keep it together. Say something nice.”

I HAVE THE SHINIEST MEAT BICYCLE!

“Yeah...”

***

Sometimes he slept.

He ate when he wanted, like a skag.

Wait...was that he ate _like_ a skag or he ate a skag?

Meh, didn't matter. It was better than spiderant chunks.

The Dust was pretty empty now. No more Helios in the sky, no more raiders on the ground. Well, they were on the ground. All over it, actually. An arm was waving at him from it. He thought it was an arm. Might just be the hand, still in a glove. Flopping and empty. He knew the feeling.

He didn't remember getting here. But his hands held his buzz-axe, and his breathing was heavy and his blood was singing. His arms hurt, like one had been torn from its socket and the other tried to compensate by being both of them.

RAAAAAGGGGEEEEE!!!!

“Huh.” Guess he did.

***

It was pretty down in Hayter's Folly.

The sun was not as strong in the cave, and the water glittered. A crystalisk lay shattered at his feet and the skags had learned to stay away. He tossed a blue crystal in his hand, up in the air, spinning, twirling, reminding.

It plunked into the shallow water, barely a splash. He left it there. He didn't need more money. He wasn't going to leave this rock. Nowhere to go anyway. Not now.

She'd liked it here, always joked about building a shack in a wall, ropes and ladders and a bed for two. Sandworms didn't bother her. She liked it when he was all bloody and sweaty. She was a strange woman.

Oasis was empty. Without her. Without anyone. Just him and the sandworms and a dance with acidic spit and blood.

He still had her Maliwan, shiny still even though he carried it all over Pandora in all kinds of weather. Purple and green and lit up with fire. She got it from Moxxi. It was her favorite.

It needed ammo.

ARGH!

The sand shifted under his feet, the ground rumbled. A snake-like head popped up from the ground and he grinned behind his mask. “Yeah.”

The buzz-axe did a fine job too.

***

He followed his feet, stumbling and tripping and sloppy. She'd laugh at him if she was there.

 _RAAAAGGGGEEEE_!!!

It was cold. Pricked on his exposed skin like needles, like all the needles he'd ever known.

He thought he could hear her laugh, earthy and from the gut.

“Great, now I'm hearin' things that _aren't_ in my head.”

He walked into a bullymung pile and just sort of...stayed there. On his knees in the snow.

“Too much. It's just too...”

He yanked off his mask, let the cold air slap him in the face like a hand. It burned when he breathed it, froze his tongue to the roof of his mouth. The eye usually covered watered and that froze on his cheek.

“No shield?” someone asked. “Only you would be out here like this. You big dummy.”

I SEE MEAT MUSCLES!

He let his head roll around on his neck and saw a figure, hooded, slim. Long hair hanging down to the waist, blue and glossy.

DAINTY!!!!

“Maya...” he breathed.

She knelt with him in the snow. Her hands were cold on his face, colder than the air. One in a glove, one skin on skin. “Hey there, big guy.”

“You're dead.”

She laughed, the one she used when she'd been swarmed and was loving it. It ended with a snort.

“Not real,” he insisted.

A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX! WHAT A BLOODY BUSINESS, BATES!

She leaned in, kissed him once, barely a brush of her lips on his. Hers were warm, his were stiff. He watched, dumbfounded and silent, as she picked up his mask and shook the snow out of it. In her careful, precise way, she put it back on him, covering one eye and his mouth. Slag hit his system like the drug it was. “I'm real enough, I think.”

He stayed where he was, on his knees, disbelieving the mirage even though he could taste it. “Prove it.”

Her lips turned up in a smile, the long wisps of hair floating on the constant tornado that was Windswept Shear. She stepped back, lifted her hand and made a fist. And he was enclosed in her phaselock, his body burning from fire and corrosion and shock all at once. It felt...

YES YES YES YES YES YES....

“...Good,” he said when she dropped him unceremoniously back in the snow.

“I missed you.”

“How?”

“C'mon, let's get out of the cold.”

TRAP TRAP TRAP. SHE WOULD NEVER TRAP _US_!

He was hyperventilating, he could feel it. Feel the adrenaline rush enhanced by the slag is his blood. His hands twitched. He felt the mania coming. Was that elation or just more insanity pouring through his veins?

PRETTY LADY!!!! HURT US, HURT _ME_!

She was looking at him, seeing the change as it happened. It never scared her, not once. Not in all the years they'd run together, blurring now like the scenery had as they rode that train for the first time. When she was younger and not so powerful. When he was truly insane, could barely string sounds together, much less words.

“Krieg,” she said, very serious the way she was sometimes, her eyes wide and loving, her hands reaching for him to comfort and soothe. She always knew just where to touch, just where to hit. They knew how to hold each other, keep the voices away. They knew how to keep each other safe in a universe that wasn't. Vaults and scattered remains of their foes and grief and pain. She was good at healing pain. As good as she was at dealing it. They always came out the other side.

Until she didn't.

Until all he heard was _ash_ and _burned up_ and _no body_ and _sacrificed herself_ and _we'll always miss her terrible jokes_. Whispers of _now there are only two left_. _Only six can survive at any time, only_...

“Death can't hold me, baby. I'm a phoenix.”

RISE FROM THE ASHES! FIRE AND BLOOD AND RAGE!

“Home sweet home," he said aloud.

Relief seemed to fill her, overflow her. Her shoulders sagged with it and her eyes sparkled with it and she was still smiling. “C'mon, Krieg. I have stories to tell and you're turning blue.”

“NIPPLE SALADS!” he shouted, not even really hearing it. She took his hand and yanked him to his feet.

“Tell me about it, baby,” Maya said as she led him across the glacier. “Tell me all about it.”


End file.
